1. The iconic I ♥ NY campaign (originally designed in 1977 by Milton Glaser) has undergone a face lift.

2. Amazing book covers of 2008!

3. Do art schools care about your GPA?

4. A dilemma that many luxury magazines are facing these days: How do you promote expensive goods without seeming out of touch with the economic crisis?

5. How to market to bloggers according to Timothy Ferriss.

6. Vogue Paris mimics the aging process from 10 to 60 through makeup and photography.

7. Starving artists are no longer starving.

8. My brother has a cool new shirt design for sale on the Urban Outfitters website.

9. Advice for adjusting your marketing strategy in a down economy.

10. This only takes a second to read but is worth it! Simple but so true.

11. 40 amazing business card designs!

12. Click here for gift ideas for the type obsessed!

13. Big, bold & beautiful typefaces! Yum!

I want to learn more about graphic design! Do you have any recommendations, such as books or websites to read?

Learning about graphic design is now easier than ever, thanks to the internet. When I was in high school in the late 90s, I remember digging through the dusty library shelves and finding not much more than a few 70s era advertising and design books. How times have changed! This list is by no means complete, but I’ve compiled some of my favorite design resources below to get you started.

1. Aisle One: An inspirational resource focused on graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism.

2. The Book Design Review: Book covers, book covers & more book covers!!!

3. The Dieline: This leading site on package design always has the freshest, most current industry news and product photos.

4. Grain Edit: This blog is focused on classic design work from the 1950s-1970s and contemporary designers that draw inspiration from that time period.

5. HI+LO The blog of NYC-based graphic designer (and former Senior Art Director at Kate Spade) Abby Clawson Low is full of quirky finds and inspiration.

I Love Typography has a collection of free type wallpapers!

6. I Love Typography: iLT is designed to inspire its readers and to make people more aware of the typography that is around them.

7. Logo Design Love: My favorite logo blog; ran by well-known graphic designer David Airey.

8. Lovely Package: If you’re interested in packaging design, this is your blog!

9. Pentagram blog: Features the work and surroundings of the award-winning design firm, Pentagram.

10. Swiss Legacy: A collaborative blog focused on typography, Swiss graphic design and the grid.

11. TypeNEU: An amazing blog with pages upon pages of type-related images.

12. Brand New: A collection of before and after shots of products and logos with reviews of the outcomes.

13. Design Observer: A blog full of writings on design and culture, as well as the best selection of article links ever in the right column.

1. Swiss Poster Collection: A comprehensive collection of posters divided by category.

2. AIGA Design Archives: These archives provide access to a massive collection of contemporary design; perfect for research and projects.

Examples from Totally Amazing Posters!
3. Totally Amazing Posters!: A compilation of vintage posters from around the world.

4. Covers: Dedicated to the appreciation of book cover design and updated several times a week.

5. FFFFOUND!: An massive brain spill of images (most design-related); a web service that not only allows users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but it also recommends similar images in accordance to each user’s tastes and interests below the image they clicked on.

6. ShareSomeCandy: An inspirational design image site similar to FFFFOUND!, but without the recommendations (and random nudity).

7. Computer Love: More than just an inspirational blog, Computer Love is a unique social platform that provides design news, allows you to connect with other creatives, share your work and promote yourself.

8. Design is Kinky: This site lists tons of links to the top designers, magazine features and events, as well as upcoming exhibitions.

1. 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer: Being a successful designer has a lot to do with the way you work. It never hurts to learn a few new tricks.

2. Bittbox: Free textures and brushes galore.

3. Logopond: Identity inspiration overload.

The Penguin & Pelican Collection
4. Penguin & Pelican Collection: A huge collection of vintage book covers neatly organzied in a Flickr set.

5. Before & After Magazine: Features downloadable articles that teach you how to do basic design tasks. In their own words: “Before & After is dedicated to making graphic design understandable, useful and even fun for everyone.”

6. Jumpola: A big list of resources for graphic designers and marketers with links to learning resources, portfolio sites, blogs, jobs, software, supplies and more.

7. Texture King: Hundreds of free textures!

8. The History of Visual Communication: Basically a massive design history book in digital form.

9. Under Consideration: Armin Vit’s comprehensive collection of design sites full of resources and commentary that have been part of the growing dialog in design.

10. Thinking With Type: If you want to learn more about typography (including info. about fonts, families & kerning!), this site is for you.

11. YouWorkForThem: This site sells design books, magazines, videos, stock vectors and more.

12. The Grid System: Everything you’ve ever needed to know about grids.

Admittedly, I don’t own many design books since I do most of my reading online. But, here are a few that I use regularly and highly recommend:

1. Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface by Lars Müller: Found Helvetica images in cities from around the world. The first design book I ever owned!

2. The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst: Sometimes called “The Typographer’s Bible,” this manual has a poetic quality to it. There’s a heaviness to the text; it’s not necessarily for beginners, but the learning curve is worth it.

3. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy: This book is a common-sense guide on how to find a job, running a studio, winning new work, self-promotion, going freelance, and more. There’s also great advice and stories from well-known designers, as well as a helpful directory of design organizations and websites in the back.

4. Issues: New Magazine Design by Jeremy Leslie & Lewis Blackwell: This book examines the culture of magazines, from the point of view of their design. It’s divided into five sections (format, covers, pace, words and images) and is a picture-packed voyage through international magazine design trends.

5. Editing by design: Word-and-picture communication for editors and designers, by Jan V. White: I am a huge fan of ALL of his books. They’re comprehensive, creative and affordable with a retro cool feel. You won’t be disappointed with any of his many titles!

6. A Type Primer by John Kane: This was a required book at school, but I held onto it because it offers a great overview on type basics including the technical terms of letterforms, working with grids and how to reinforce meaning with type. If you’re an entry level designer, this book is a good option.

7. Experimental Formats 2: Books, Brochures, Catalogs by Roger Fawcett-Tang: I originally saw this at the MoMA store in New York and it blew me away. The concepts in this book are amazing and break the mold. If you’re doing any work with books, brochures or catalogs, this is the book for you.

8. Branding: From Brief to Finished Solution: A compilation of branding and identity projects from a roster of design groups with actual sketchwork, design development, research materials and finished work. This is a great opportunity to see a client brief carried out from beginning to end.

9. The Typographic Desk Reference: This book hasn’t been released yet, but it’s beautifully designed and full of indispensable material about type terms, glyphs, anatomy and type specimen examples.

Hopefully these resources will lead you to a path of learning, loving and embracing graphic design!

1. I usually work on two art series simultaneously, otherwise I get really bored.

2. I have been wearing lederhosen since I was four.

3. Least favorite colors: Brown and yellow.

4. I can’t do a cartwheel or whistle.

5. The only sports I’ve ever tried were swimming lessons and Taekwondo and both of those were 10+ years ago. (I don’t really exercise. Much prefer stillness).

6. I have a major disdain for most condiments including mayonnaise, BBQ sauce, mustard and all types of dressing.

7. I’ve met both Marilyn Manson and Vanilla Ice.

8. I rarely stand in front of the mirror when brushing my teeth. Instead, I wander all over the house. (Gala totally noticed this when we ran the Virgo Boarding House!)

9. Lee & I are not from the same species. I wear a size 6.5 or 7 shoe and he wears a 14. I am 5 foot 3 inches tall and he is 6 foot 3!

10. I do everything left-handed except for using a mouse.

Now, tell me something about you.
Who are you?
What do you do?
What makes you unique?

What I wore:

Sweater dress, Twelve by Twelve
Tights, Forever 21
Boots, Harley (with custom treads)
Watch, Nixon
Purse, Miu Miu

I think this sweater dress has a medieval knight’s armor vibe mixed with 60s futuristic fashion (like Rudi Gernreich). Since the weather has been cold and rainy, I’ve been leaving my nice shoes at home and wearing these customized Harley boots with pretty much everything.

A few months ago, I was invited to participate in a group show at Sequential Art Gallery. The pitch was to recreate a classic pulp fiction book cover as a poster-sized piece of art. After doing some digging, I found a 60s era book with the intriguing title The Wayward Wife and this is my interpretation!

For the gallery show, I made a single edition with blue accents. The above version with pink accents is now available for $25.00 in a limited, signed & numbered edition of 20 in my online store! Posters will be mailed rolled in a tube and shipping in the U.S. is included in the price. More detailed instructions are here.

Since the posters are supposed to be oversized versions of book covers, I was curious to see how they’d look as a multidimensional item:

P.S. The group art show at Sequential Art is called TEN CENT TALES of TRUE TERROR and TWO-FISTED TITILLATION! There will be a First Thursday reception from 6-10pm and I will be there for a bit.

As always, if you have any questions, please email me at: nubby@nubbytwiglet.com!

The month of December from my calendar can be downloaded here.

What I wore:

Sweater, Old Navy
Dress, H&M
Tights, DKNY
Beret, Isaac for Target
Shoes, Dries Van Noten
Watch, Nixon
Purse, Miu Miu

To all of my American readers, I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving! I spent mine in my grandma & grandpa’s cabin, surrounded by family. We laughed (& drank) and I fell asleep on the couch by an early 1900s cook stove. Pretty Idyllic! How was your week?

This is what I wore for the first half of Thanksgiving while hanging out in Portland. I decided to go up to the mountains later on and changed into the much more practical combo of black jeans and Harley boots.

What I wore:

Wool jacket, Love & Glamour
Cardigan, DKNY
Dress, H&M
Scarf, Canal Street, NYC
Tights, H&M
Boots, John Fluevog
Purse, Miu Miu

1. Recession Chic: In troubled economic times, people may dress according to who they really are rather than who they want to be (via Business of Fashion).

2. The Helvetica edition of Moleskine is pretty much the best thing ever.

3. From now on, I am paying for everything with Chanel coins.

4. Click for your fortune of the day. It’s a good one! Promise!

5. An excerpt from Karl Lagerfeld’s run-in with pervs:

As of late there have been some pervs writing into the blog. They say things like:
“Oh, Karl, I want to suck on your little leather gloves and lick your tough high starched collar, and unstich your Tom Ford suit thread-by-thread.” So I asked for a picture and it turned out this perv was Marc Jacobs.

6. Google now has a feature that allows you to search through millions of historic LIFE photos! The archive, stretching from the 1750s to today is high resolution and most of the images have never been published.

7. Behold the first ever digital polaroids!

8. 7 essential things you should be doing while your blog is still young.

9. This is from ages ago, but I love this artist’s sketches of imaginary shoes. Double heels and hooves, oh my!

Everyone has used sticky notes, but they are rarely as stylish (or as practical) as the Graph Cube Post-It. The stack features 1,000 sheets that are printed with a 13 x 13 grid square. Perfect for doodling, writing in a straight line or just making your desk surface more stylish! I bought mine this weekend and have been admiring its beauty ever since…

♥ Soft pink with dabbles of ink!
+ The Fashion Notebook set on Flickr.

What I wore:

Circle Scarf , American Apparel (I did a take on the capelet)
City Print shirt, American Apparel
Tunic, Mossimo
Jeans, Wet Seal
Watch, Nixon
Wedges, Corso Como
Purse, Miu Miu

Your turn:
1. What kind of bag do you carry?
2. What’s your dream bag?
3. What’s your most prized posession inside that you cannot live without?

This is what I wore out to the suburbs last night where I was subsequently whisked away to a martini bar where a very large drunk woman fell over and smeared a piece of her birthday cake across the table. Two other ladies were trying to hold her up but without much luck…because they were very drunk also. I was a little worried as I looked over my shoulder and saw the same lady nearly stumble down a flight of stairs on her way out. Who says that there’s nothing going on these days out in the suburbs?! Haha!

What I wore:

Jacket , Wilson’s
cardigan, DKNY
Shirt, LA Made
Pants, Target
Boots, Harley Davidson (with custom treads)
Purse, Miu Miu

1. streetstyl.es compiles pictures from all of the best fashion blogs into one page and constantly refreshes when they update. Genius!

2. Gala Darling answers the age old question, What should I wear?

3. These are possibly the best designed book spines that I have ever seen:

4. TypeNEU is chock-full of typographic inspiration and it’s set up as a blog so you can subscribe to it here.

5. On that note, Typography Served has even more inspiration! Total type overload.

6. French graffiti artist Fafi has a blog.

7. McDonalds takes the No-Brand Concept to Japan! Amazingly, the shops look sleek and upscale and only feature TWO menu options!

8. These acrylic alphabet necklaces would make such a great gift!

9. Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of Laying People Off.

10. Are RSS subscribers worthwhile if they don’t visit your blog?

11. Wall Street’s crash is good news for social software.

12. MagCulture is a blog ALL about editorial design!

Find a way to humanize your brand, use your personality, and take your brand
from good to great. -Guy Kawasaki

Do you envision your blog as a brand? If you do, try embracing the concept of brand personality. To understand what brand personality is, envision your brand as if it were a person. It would have values, beliefs and interests. These attributes are what would make it unique.

Groundbreaking package designer Walter Landor felt that everything you project into the world goes toward creating your brand. Each little piece is of equal importance, equal weight, and has to be appropriate to the audience it is reaching or the message that it is trying to promote.

The energy that you put out on your blog will be directly related to what you receive in return. Since your blog is a brand and you are the central driving force behind developing its personality, it is further defined by every action you take and every post that you create.

THE KEYS TO TURNING YOUR BLOG INTO A SUCCESSFUL BRAND

1. Determine what your goals are. These goals will pull you through the tough times, give you a focus and ultimately, a way to measure your success. I prefer defined goals that I can actually measure such as reaching a specific rank on Technorati every six months, gaining a certain level of traffic every year, posting a set number of articles to my blog each week, and so on. Without any gray area, it’s much easier to see if you’re hitting the mark.

2. Find out what your readers want and need. How does your brand fit into their life? The best way to determine your reader’s needs is to ask them. Develop a direct connection between your blog and its readers. Do some old fashioned research, whether it’s through polling, emails or a survey post. As an incentive, run a contest.

3. Clearly communicate your blog’s personality. This can be facilitated through being trustworthy, relaible, developing a unique slogan and having a memorable blogging voice.

WHY THE PERSONALITY BEHIND YOUR BLOG IS SO IMPORTANT

Marketing has become a mass-produced commodity that lacks authenticity. Our saturation point has been reached and the old rules no longer work. Though used mostly for products and services, branding can also be applied to people. The key to developing an authentic brand is to be true to who you are and to follow your own, unique path. This individuality is the one thing that you can claim as yours. Though others may try to impersonate it along the way, it’s usually fairly easy to spot the original voice among them. Give some thought to the one thing that makes your brand unique, the one attribute that no one can take away from you. This is where you should focus your energy.

The characteristic that many of the most successful blogs share is that people are following the BLOGGER, not the BLOG. A blog’s theme can be replicated, but the personality behind it cannot. There may been hundreds, if not thousands of blogs in a saturated niche. So ask yourself, why do you repeatedly go back to the same blogs when you can probably get the same information from another site?

Gala Darling, a pink-haired force of positivity

Gala Darling’s consistent voice and unwavering positivity, Heather Armstrong’s sarcastic tone and over-the-top stories and Jane’s jaw-droppingly original styling are all examples of unique, immediately recognizable characteristics. Notice that I didn’t refer to their respective project names of iCiNG, dooce, or Sea of Shoes. What these bloggers do can stand on its own, period.

As Tom Dorresteijn notes, “The concept of brand personality combines inside-out and outside-in; identity and image. A personality has its roots in the identity but is strongly externally focused. It is not ‘be who your are’. Personality is: Become who you should be.”

DEVELOP A SOLID BRAND IDENTITY

If your blog was a living, breathing person, what adjectives would you use to describe it?

The world belongs to those who stand out, stand up and stand for or against a cause which they can strongly defend, those who can talk crowd and keep their virtues or walk with kings and not lose the common touch – their identity. An independent mind is a frontier of change in the world. -Tayo Korede

Make your brand come alive. Give it a personality that jumps off the page. Strive to make your readers’ experiences memorable. Once you establish a level of quality on your blog, never look back.

Readers:
What is your blog about?
What characteristics make it unique?
How do you plan on taking it to the next level?

Sunday = another trip to the graveyard. Only 20 blocks from my house, how convenient! I’ve been wearing my trusty Harley boots lately because I haven’t been able to get my paws on a pair of Chloé harness boots. Every time I spot a pair, someone else snaps them up!

What I wore:

Dress , Forever 21
Shirt, LA Made
Belt, borrowed from another dress
Watch, Nixon
Leggings, Forever 21
Zipper boots, Harley Davidson (with custom treads)
Purse, Miu Miu

Over the last few days, I’ve been printing and assembling my identity. Digital renderings only convey so much, so I’m posting photos of the printed outcome that’s based on this post.

Shown: Double-sided business card, cover sheet, mailing label, form letter, invoice. (I don’t have an immediate need for a CD, so I’ve left it out for now).